Preparation of high performance foamed concrete from cement, sand and mineral admixtures

Abstract

The titled high performance foamed concrete was developed from Portland cement, ultra fine granulated blast-furnace slag, pulverized fly ash and condensed silica fume by means of pre-foaming process. The resultant foamed concrete presents its thermal conductivity of about 0.16-0.75 W/(m • °C) and 28 d compressive strength of about 1.1-23.7 MPa when its mix proportion varies in the range of cement content 280 kg-650 kg/m3, fly ash 42-97 kg/m3, slag 64-146 kg/m3, silica fume 34-78 kg/m3, and sand 0-920 kg/m3. The compressive strength of the foamed concrete with oven dried bulk density of 1500 kg/m3 in appropriate mix proportion and with small amount of superplasticizer reached as high as 44.1 MPa. Meanwhile, the fresh foamed concrete behaves like an excellent flow-ability, therefore, is especially suitable for the application in case of massive foamed concrete casting in situ and in the case of filling casting into large volume underground irregular voids, except for pre-casting of building components like blocks, bricks, and wall panels. © 2007 Wuhan University of Technology and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.